If you type in "Buddhism" to the Bible Brain search bar, you probably won't find many results. Having done it just now, I received 6 total results, all of which mention it as a side note, never an attempted criticism. In fact, this paragraph, as of 14/16/2021, is the longest paragraph on Bible Brain concerning Buddhism. There is a reason for this: I couldn't fit my knowledge of Buddhism into a single leaflet. I know next to nothing about Buddhism, and so I don't want to make myself look like a dunce by criticising it. That may change in the future, but until I have done a significant amount of research into Buddhism, or have recruited an author to the team who has, you won't see significant mention of it on Bible Brain.
Atheists aren't very good at treating Christianity in the same way. The meme in the top left corner of the header image is an excellent example. While it accuses Christians of cherry picking the Bible, it of course cherry picks some of the most cherry picked verses (scratch that: It doesn't even cite the verses), before making the claim that Jesus never said anything against homosexuality.
The main claims of the meme are:
- The Bible says Christians should not eat shellfish
- The Bible says Christians should not get tattoos
- The Bible says men may control women
- The Bible does not say anything against homosexuality.
The shellfish and tattoo things both have the same "easy" refutation. It's based on a non-understanding of the distinction between Old and New Testaments. It's somewhat understandable that atheists who don't study Christianity would see the Bible as just a long list of rules, but the truth is it's not. There is continuity.
To demonstrate this, let us examine Galatians 3:24-25: "Therefore the law was our tutor to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after faith has come, we are no longer under a tutor." In just two verses, Paul explains that the law did not survive the crucifixion. So yes, it was wrong for Jews, living in Israel before the Incarnation of Christ, to eat shellfish or get tattoos, because they were under a specific covenant with God. For Christians around the world, however, this simply isn't the case, because we are under the new covenant.
This same verse answers the common counter question "so why do we even need the Old Testament?" The Old Testament, while it has different modern applications, still has modern applications. For one thing, it is our tutor to bring us to Christ. Without the Old Testament, there is no New Testament. The Old Testament is foundational to the New. It tells us so many important things that simply could not be summed up in one article.
There is one more important thing to note about the morality of the Old Testament. There are different kinds of laws. The distinction is often made between moral, civil and ceremonial laws. Moral laws, unlike the others, are absolute. It will never be morally acceptable to steal, commit adultery or murder someone. See here for more information.
The New Testament is extremely helpful in that it doesn't just leave us floundering to figure out which laws still apply and which were never supposed to. Passages like Romans 14 explicitly tell us that all foods are permissible, so there are no Old Testament food laws we are required to obey. The law about tattoos is not explicitly repealed in the New Testament, but at the very least is never renewed, meaning that is most likely not a moral law, and so Christians are free to make their own minds up. It's between them and God. Laws about murder are renewed (and existed even prior to the Old Covenant), and so this is definitely a moral law.
So what about "controlling women"? Because the author of the meme never actually cited verses that allegedly say men can control women, I have no case to answer to in this particular example. Based on prior encounters with atheists making similar claims, I can think of a few they might have been thinking of, but I don't know for sure, and so trying to address them would be a straw man argument. I also don't know who made the meme, so I can't ask them. But suffice to say, nowhere does the Bible say men can control women. It does describe gender roles with regard to both the Church and the family, as well as describing submission to authorities that may occasionally require women to submit to men (but by the same token requires men to submit to women), but Biblically speaking, neither gender is ever seen as being inherently superior, and I don't know any Christian who says otherwise.
As for "anti-gay verses Jesus never said", there are three main flaws here. The first is that it assumes in order for a verse to be relevant to Christianity, it must have been said by Jesus Himself. Of course, this would contradict the entire meme, because Jesus never said "don't eat shellfish" (and in fact declared all foods clean in Mark 7:19), neither did He ever say "don't get a tattoo", and He certainly never said "men can control women". He was actually quite fond of breaking the misogynistic norms of His time. In other words, ironically, this meme maker is actively encouraging you to cherry pick, and practically confessing to having done it themselves.
The second problem is that all Bible verses are ultimately said by Jesus. The Doctrine of the Trinity is a basic and fundamental doctrine of Christianity, as is the inspiration of Scripture. Consider the following syllogism:
Premise 1: God is the ultimate author of Scripture (e.g. 2 Timothy 3:16).
Premise 2: Jesus is God (e.g. John 1:1).
Conclusion: Jesus is the ultimate author of Scripture.
So, every "anti-gay" verse in the Bible, whether it's in red letters or in black, is Jesus' own words. If you do not know this, you are no more qualified to discuss Christianity than I am to perform open heart surgery.
But finally, let's just pretend that Jesus isn't the ultimate author of Scripture. Let's imagine that the only way for a verse to be valid Christian doctrine, it must be in red letters (invalidating the rest of the meme). In this case, Jesus not only affirmed the rest of the Scriptures (e.g. Matthew 4:4) including Moses' writings (e.g. John 5:46), but He did directly address marriage, of course going back to Genesis to back up His views. He basically said that marriage is based on Adam and Eve: One man and one woman for life. In other words, those who say "God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve" are right.
The funniest thing about this meme is that it accuses Christians of omitting verses they don't want to follow, while simultaneously bringing up a concept that most Christians obviously do follow, but a lot of us don't really want to. Case in point, I'm actually an ex-gay. There was a time, of course early in my faith before I'd actually read the Bible, when I thought Christianity was not against homosexuality. And when I found out it was, I resisted. But of course, I now understand that it is opposed to homosexuality, and so I am too. Now, if I was really throwing out verses I don't like, would it really only be the trivial ones? I don't eat shellfish because I don't like shellfish, so why should it bother me if the Bible forbids shellfish? I have tattoos, but I don't plan on getting more, and it's not like I can just get rid of the ones I have, so why should I care if the Bible spoke against tattoos? But homosexuality used to be a large, even fundamental part of my identity, and disagreement with homosexuality is becoming increasingly unpopular, even meriting vicious hatred from the radical Left, so if I just pick and choose which Bible verses to ignore, why don't I ignore the ones I would have real motive to ignore?
The obvious answer is because I don't ignore parts of the Bible I don't like. Rather, I take it all in its intended context. The Bible is not a simple book. It's certainly not so simple that you can become an expert just by Googling "Christianity is stupid" and reading the first page you find on ChristiansAreIdiots.com (probably not a real website, visit it at your own risk). But of course, atheists typically don't know this. And they don't know this because they actually don't want to. It takes no real intelligence to make silly memes about Christianity, but it takes a lot of brainpower to read a 1,500 page book, and a lot more brainpower to actually understand that 1,500 page book.
Apparently, Jesus isn't the only one who had to struggle so we could inherit eternal life. I mean, yeah, being brutally tortured to death is pretty horrible, but like, do I really have to switch my brain on? An eternity in Hell sounds so much easier than, you know, actually thinking about my worldview. Can't I just sit back and laugh at those who think things through?
Foolishness. Insanity, even. Ignorance is one thing, deliberate ignorance is another. To atheist meme makers, and to their followers, I have only one piece of advice: God did not give you such powerful brains with the intention that you forego their use. Switch them on, and until you have actually studied Christianity, don't attempt to criticise it.